“Oh, the poor child!” cried sympathetic Ruth, and followed in the wake of the angry housekeeper.
“Fire! Fire!” moaned Jennie Stone.
“Cat’s foot!” snapped Helen Cameron. “It’s water—and it is flooding the whole room.”
She ran to set the can upright—after the water was all out of it. Without thinking of her costume, Ruth Fielding ran to avert Bella’s punishment if she could. She knew the aunt was beside herself with rage, and Ruth feared that the woman would, indeed, give Bella her “nevergetovers.”
The corridor of the hotel was long, running from front to rear of the main building. The window at the rear end of it overlooked the roof of the back kitchen. This window was open, and when Ruth reached the corridor Bella was going head-first through the open window, like a circus clown diving through a hoop.
She had discarded Jennie’s shirt-waist between the bedroom and the window. But Ruth’s skirt still flapped about the child’s thin shanks.
Miss Timmins, breathing threatenings and slaughter, raced down the hall in pursuit. Ruth followed, begging for quarter for the terrified child.
But the housekeeper went through the open window after Bella, although in a more conventional manner, paying no heed to Ruth’s plea. The frightened girl, however, escaped her aunt’s clutch by slipping off the borrowed skirt and descending the trumpet-vine trellis by the kitchen door.
“Do let her go, Miss Timmins!” begged Ruth, as the panting woman, carrying Ruth’s skirt, returned to the window where the girl of the Red Mill stood. “She is scared to death. She was doing no harm.”
“I’ll thank you to mind your own business, Miss,” snapped Miss Timmins hotly. “I declare! A girl growed like you running ’round in men’s overalls—or, what be them things you got on?”